This blog is intended to provide the reader with important world news with an emphasis on Middle East and North Africa. It will publish news, analyses, comments, and opinions concerning those two regions. However, We welcome any comments, news or opinions which are related to their countries. You can visit too www.asswak-alarab.com for more information.

Friday, October 29, 2010

The Obsession With Olive Trees

Hassan Haidar

This comment was published in al-Hayat on 28/10/2010

Israel, its government, army and settlers have become morbidly obsessed with olive trees. Rarely does a day pass by without a battle being waged against these trees, which turn into the number one enemy of the state at every harvest season, because they always remind it that it is occupying a land that is not its own. The stubbornness of roots that run deep makes Israelis lose their temper, frenziedly attacking to pull them out and break their branches, in a desperate attempt to erase this symbol from the memory of the Palestinians.

Ever since the late Yasser Arafat carried “the olive branch” to the United Nations, the tree has been classified as “terrorist” and it has become required to prevent it from spreading and to stop it from addressing the world.

The cycle of attacks against olive trees goes on everyday in Palestinian areas close to the settlement belt. Here are a few samples from the past week alone:

In the village of Deir Al-Hatab, inhabitants of the settlement of Elon Moreh murdered two thousand olive trees when they directed the flow of sewage water towards a grove whose owners are forbidden from visiting due to its proximity to the settlement.

And in the village of Burin near Nablus, settlers attacked farmers who had come to harvest their olives, burning the sheds they rest in, before being helped in their assault by the Israeli army, which used tear gas against the owners of the land. The outcome was the loss of 500 olive trees by burning or by having chemicals spilled on them.

In the village of Faraata near Qalqilya, settlers from Havat Gilad attacked the olive groves and destroyed 600 trees.

Settlers also resort to stealing the harvest before burning the trees, based on the religious edicts of extremist rabbis who consider Palestinian land to be “the inheritance of the people of Israel” and its fruits “their property regardless of who planted them”.

In Gaza, where occupation forces have bulldozed 130 thousand trees, the street in which the largest number of civilians was killed in a single hit (22 women and children) during the war on the Gaza Strip is called “Hayy Al-Zaytoun” (Olive Street). And the Palestinians assert that army bulldozers have to this day destroyed one million trees in the West Bank.

Settlers who attack trees are not subject to any lawsuits, and the investigations of pure form conducted by the police never yield any results, like the hundreds of complaints filed by Palestinians that know no fate but that of locked drawers.

Yet burning and destroying them is not the only way to exact revenge on olive trees. Indeed, Israeli army checkpoints obstruct movement between the villages and cities of the West Bank and prevent Palestinian agricultural production, most prominently olives and olive oil, from reaching domestic or international markets, this before the obstacles laid down by exports laws lead to a large part of this production spoiling.

This is a war waged by Israel with all of its constituents and institutions against this ancient and giving tree, which has proven that its ability to resist the occupation was greater than that of rockets being launched here and there aimlessly. Perhaps it has become the Palestinian Authority’s duty to think of adding an olive tree to the national flag, or to raise the banner of this tree in every Palestinian home, even inside Israel.

The olive tree exposes the foreign accents and hands that violate its branches and its memory. As for the land which the settlers coming from Europe and America “discovered” in the leaflets of the Jewish Agency, it waits patiently while saving the experience of centuries of resilience, and it knows that its trees will grow once again every time they are uprooted.

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...